| February 2 | Colum McCann is an Irish-born author whose fiction has been published in thirty-five languages. His National Book Award-winning novel Let The Great World Spin was recognized with major awards from eight nations. His newest book, Apeirigon, was published in 2020. | |
| March 31 | TU Alumna Rilla Askew has been PEN/Faulkner finalist and recipient of the Western Heritage Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and a 2009 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novel about the Tulsa Race Massacre, Fire in Beulah, received the American Book Award in 2002, and was selected for Oklahoma’s One Book One State reading program. Askew’s essays and short fiction have appeared in Tin House, World Literature Today, Nimrod, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma. | |
| November 11 | Robert Jackson is the James G. Watson Professor of English at TU. His work explores interdisciplinary connections among literature, film and media, and social history in the modern and contemporary United States. His most recent book, Fade In, Crossroads: A History of the Southern Cinema, considers the varied relations between black and white southerners and the motion picture medium from the silent era to midcentury. Current projects include a study of James Baldwin's circle of political and cultural allies in the early 1960s, and a study of William Faulkner as a theorist of race and media emerging from the Jim Crow South. |
| February 4 | Paul Theroux is an American novelist and travel writer who has written numerous books, including the best-selling travelogue, The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). Some of his works of fiction have been adapted as feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast, which was adapted for a 1986 movie starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, and the 2021 television series of the same name. |
| September 16 | Kristen Oertel is the Mary Frances Barnard Professor of History at the University of Tulsa. She teaches classes on the Civil War and Reconstruction, African-American history, the history of race and gender in America, and the history of sexuality, and writes about how race and gender influenced social and cultural relations in the 19th century, especially during the Civil War era. Oertel's most recent book, Harriet Tubman: Slavery, the Civil War, and Civil Rights in the 19th Century (2015), chronicles the life of this iconic leader of the Underground Railroad. |
| February 21 | Maya Jasanoff is the Coolidge Professor of History and a Harvard College Professor at Harvard University. She is the author of three books, most recently The Dawn Watch: Joseph COnrad in a Global World (2017). Jasanoff was awarded a 2017 Windham-Campbell Prize in recognition of her contributions to nonfiction literature and was the recipient of the 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, among others. |
| April 16 | Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Joy Harjo is an internationally known poet, writer, performer and saxophone player of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. Harjo’s eight books of poetry include such well-known titles as How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems and She Had Some Horses. She has won numerous awards, and in 2014, Harjo was inducted into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame. |
| November 12 | Timothy Young, TU alumnus and the Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. ;reserved=0">More details |
| April 12 | Jeffrey Drouin – Working on British and Irish modernism in the transatlantic context, with a particular focus on the novel, periodicals and Digital Humanities. His first book, James Joyce Science, and Modernist Print Culture: The Einstein of English Fiction with Routledge was published in 2014. Through teaching and research, he also explores the use of computational models to map and visualize modernist literature and avant-garde magazines in both the anglophone and francophone contexts. Drouin is currently working on The Ecclesiastical Proust Archive, a multimedia resource to support computational analysis and network modeling of Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu. |
| February 22 | Martin Walker – Senior fellow of the Global Business Policy Council, a private think tank based in Washington, D.C. He is also editor in chief emeritus and international affairs columnist at United Press International. His previous novels in the Bruno series are Bruno, Chief of Police; The Dark Vineyard; Black Diamond; The Crowded Grave; The Devil’s Cave; The Resistance Man; The Children Return; and The Patriarch, all international bestsellers. He lives in Washington, D.C., and the Dordogne. |
| October 4 | Adrian W. Alexander, R. M. and Ida McFarlin Dean of the Library. McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa. |
| November 9 | Rilla Askew – Author of four novels, a book of stories, and a collection of creative nonfiction, Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place. She’s a PEN/Faulkner finalist, recipient of the Western Heritage Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and a 2009 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novel about the Tulsa Race Riot, Fire in Beulah, received the American Book Award in 2002, and was selected for Oklahoma’s One Book One State reading program. Askew’s essays and short fiction have appeared in Tin House, World Literature Today, Nimrod, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma. |
| February 16 | Randall Fuller – Author of From Battlefields Rising: How the Civil War Transformed American Literature, which won the Phi Beta Kappa’s Christian Gauss Award for best literary criticism, and Emerson’s Ghosts: Literature, Politics, and the Making of Americanists. He has written for The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications. |
| April 16 | Tim Blake Nelson – American actor, writer and director. He was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and graduated from Holland Hall. Nelson is best known for his work in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Incredible Hulk and Lincoln. |
| February 18 | Robert Pickering – Founding director of the Museum Science and Management MA program and professor of anthropology at TU and serves as adjunct curator of anthropology at Gilcrease Museum. |
| April 14 | Rachel Kushner – New York Times bestseller and a finalist for both the 2008 National Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, it was a winner of the California Book Award. The Flamethrowers, her latest work, was a finalist for the 2013 National Book Award and was named one of the Top Ten Books of 2013 by The New York Times. |
| November 10 | Jane Smiley – Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has been praised as “a diverse and masterly writer”. Two of her twelve novels have been made into movies — the Pulitzer winning A Thousand Acres (which retells King Lear set in Iowa) and The Age of Grief, filmed as The Secret Lives of Dentists. |
| February 26 | Vic Zoschak– Retired US Coast Guard search and rescue pilot. Entered the antiquarian book trade in 1989 by establishing Tavistock Books. Accepted into the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA) and serves on the ABAA National Board of Governors. |
| April 16 | Geoff Wawro – Professor of History and Director of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas. Author of five books, most recently of A Mad Catastrophe: The Outbreak of World War I and the Collapse of Habsburg Empire. Won the Austrian Cultural Institute Prize and the Society for Military History Moncado Prize for Excellence in the Writing of Military History. |
| October 15 | Maureen Corrigan – Book critic for NPR’s Fresh Air. Columnist for the Washington Post and the critic-in-residence at Georgetown University. Author of Leave me Alone I’m Reading and So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why it Endures, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by Library Journal. |
| February 20 | Joseph Kestner – McFarlin Professor of English and founding chair of the Department of Film Studies. Received TU’s prestigious Outstanding Teacher Award in 1984. The author of eight books, including three on detective fiction – Sherlock’s Men, The Edwardian Detective, and Sherlock’s Sisters. |
| April 10 | Douglas Brinkley – The author of a number of award-winning and bestselling books, including The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Tour of Duty, The Boys of Pointe du Hoc, and Parish Priest. Professor of history and Baker Institute Fellow at Rice University. |
| October 23 | Paul Muldoon – An Irish poet educated in Armagh and at the Queen’s University of Belfast and now based in the United States. He is the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor at Princeton University, the Poetry Editor of The New Yorker, and an honorary Fellow of Hertford College at the University of Oxford. |
| February 21 | A.S. Byatt – Renowned internationally for her novels and short stories, including Booker Prize-winning Possession. A distinguished critic as well as a writer of fiction. |
| April 11 | Tom Staley – Former faculty member of the University of Tulsa, where he founded the James Joyce Quarterly, served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1981-1983 and Provost from 1983-1988. |
| November 7 | Patrick French – Leading British writer, historian and biographer based in London. Received several honors including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Prize and the Hawthornden Prize. |
| February 28 | Jeffrey Brown – PBS correspondent and Co-host of the PBS NewsHour |
| April 3 | Timothy Egan – 2006 National Book Award winning author of The Worst Hard Time, and 2001 Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the series How Race is Lived in America. |
| October 25 | Joli Jensen – Hazel Rogers Professor of Communication Founded and directs the TU Henneke Faculty Writing Center. |
| February 17 | David Feldshuh, Ph.D., M.D – Professor and Artistic Director of the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts at Cornell University. Feldshuh is best known for his play Miss Evers’ Boys, which received the New American Play Award, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and won five Emmy awards as an HBO movie. |
| April 12 | Merlin Holland – Biographer and editor, and the only grandson of Irish writer and playwright Oscar Wilde. |
| November 17 | Brian Hosmer, Ph.D – H.G. Barnard Chair in Western History at The University of Tulsa and former director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian History at the Newberry Library in Chicago. |
| February 18 | Michael Wallis Author, Playwright, Historian; Three time Pulitzer Prize nominee; first inductee into the Oklahoma Route 66 Hall of Fame |
| April 8 | Tracy Letts Playwright; 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama winner; 2008 Tony Award for Best Play winner; 2008 Arena Desk Award for Outstanding Play winner |
| November 11 | Robert Spoo, Ph.D., J.D. – On literature and the law Associate Professor of Law at The University of Tulsa, formerly tenured English professor and editor of the James Joyce Quarterly at The University of Tulsa. |
| February 5 | Paul Hutton Historian, Author; Executive Director of the Western History Association |
| April 21 | Ellen Gilchrist Author, former NPR commentator; 1984 National Book Award for Fiction winner |
| October 22 | James G. Watson – “Out of the Mississippi Attenuated: Working with William Faulkner” Faulkner scholar; past Francis W. O’Hornett Professor of Literature, The University of Tulsa |
| February 7 | James Ronda Historian, Author; H.G. Barnard Chair of Western History, The University of Tulsa (retired) |
| April 10 | Brenda Maddox, Lady Maddox Author, Scholar, Book reviewer, BBC commentator; 1994 Whitbread Book Award for Biography winner |
| November 18 | Sean Latham Scholar; editor, James Joyce Quarterly; co-director of the Modernist Journals Project; co-editor of the Journal of Modern Periodical Studies. |
| February | Nancy Pearl Author, Librarian, NPR Commentator |
| April 19 | Michiel Heyns Scholar, Author, Translator, Book reviewer; 2006 Sunday Times Fiction Prize winner |
| November 1 | Scott Ellsworth – On 100 Years of Oklahoma Statehood Historian |
| January 26 | Gordon O. Taylor Scholar; Chapman Professor of English, The University of Tulsa |
| April | Courtney Brkic – Readings from The Stone Fields Author, Forensic Anthropologist; 2003 Whiting Writers’ Award winner |
| October | Charles Kimball – On Islam Author, Theologian; Presidental Professor and Director of Religious Studies, University of Oklahoma |
| February 19 | James Ronda Historian, Author; H.G. Barnard Chair of Western History, The University of Tulsa (retired) |
| April 11 | Rick West Director of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institute |
| October 10 | Miguel Angel Centeno Scholar |
| April 20 | Richard Preston Author, Columnist |
| October 7 | Luca Crispi and Stacey Herbert Scholars; James Joyce Research Fellow at the National Library of Ireland (Crispi); curators of “In Good Company”, an exhibit on James Joyce |
| March 6 | Eva Brann – On Paul Scott’s Towers of Silence Scholar; 2005 recipient of the National Humanities Medal |
| April 22 | Calvin Trillin Humorist, Columnist |
| June 16 | Private showing of “In Good Company” An exhibit on James Joyce, in conjunction with the North American James Joyce Symposium |
| September 16 | Peter Matthiessen Author, Naturalist; Two time National Book Award winner; co-founder of The Paris Review |
| November 6 | J. M. Coetzee Author, 2003 Nobel Laureate; Two time Booker Prize winner |
| March 7 | Brian Greene – On The Elegant Universe Physicist, Author; Pulitzer Prize finalist |
| April 24 | Ronald M. George – On Law as Literature Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court |
| October 24 | Ron Carlson Author, Book reviewer; National Society of Arts and Letters Literature Award winner |
| February 22 | John Agresto Scholar, Lecturer |
| April 26 | Seamus Heaney Poet, 1995 Nobel Laureate; 2006 T.S. Eliot Award winner; 2009 David Cohen Prize winner for lifetime achievement in British Literature |
| November 8 | Tim O’Brien Author; 1979 National Book Award winner |
| February 17 | Carl Rollyson – On Biography and Rebecca West Author, Biographer; 2003-2007 President of the Rebecca West Society |
| September 14 | Rupert Hart Davis library unwrapping |
| March 30 | Mark Singer – On The New Yorker Author; staff writer for The New Yorker |
| October 19 | John Edgar Wideman Author; Two time winner of the International PEN/Faulkner Award |
| January 12 | Sidney F. and Elizabeth Stege Huttner – “Orchids, Gold Leaf and Padded Leather: The Adventures of ‘Lucille’ in America” Book Collectors |
| April 15 | Sir V. S. Naipaul – On Beyond Belief Author, 2001 Nobel Laureate; 1971 Booker Prize winner; 1993 David Cohen Prize winner for lifetime achievement in British Literature |
| September 23 | Philbrook Exhibit of Artists Books Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma |
| October 21 | Robert Hirst – “Editing Mark Twain” General editor of the Mark Twain Papers and Project, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley |
| April 27 | Darcy O’Brien – Readings from his works True Crime Author; 1997 inductee into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame |
| October 29 | Charles Brown – “Mixed Blessings: The Complex Social Life of the Cliff Swallow” Biologist; past curator of ornithology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University |
| February 4 | Colin Franklin – “Twenty-Five Years a Bookseller” Author, Antiquarian Bookseller; Honorary President of the Oxford University Society of Bibliophiles |
| April 3 | Thomas F. Staley Director of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin; founding editor,James Joyce Quarterly |
| September 25 | James G. Watson – “Faulkner at 100” Faulkner scholar; past Francis W. O’Hornett Professor of Literature, The University of Tulsa |
| October 22 | Scott Ellsworth – On Huck Finn Historian |
| February 21 | Mary Robinson Seventh President of Ireland, 1990-1997; 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient |
| March 11 | Ken Burns Documentary Filmmaker; Two time Academy Award nominee; Seven time Emmy Award winner |
| April 1 | David Vaisey, C.B.E. – “Bodley Library: Past Treasures, Future Prospects” Librarian, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, 1986-1996 |
| September 16 | William Eddins Assistant Conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Associate Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra; 2000 Seaver Conducting Award winner |
| October 16 | Laura Wee Lay Laq – Examination of the Pre-Columbian Pottery Collections Ceramicist, Artist, Illustrator |
| October 24 | Lucille Clifton Poet; 2000 National Book Award winner; 2007 Rita Lilly Poetry Prize winner (cancelled due to illness) |
| November 19 | A. G. Mojtabai – On Hospice Volunteering Author |
| February 15 | James Fallows Editor, NPR Commentator, Author; 1982 National Book Award winner; 2003 National Magazine Award winner |
| April 25 | Joan Troccoli – On George Catlin and Sir Thomas Phillipps Deputy Director at the Denver Art Museum. |
| October 10 | Philip Ziegler – On London at War Biographer, Historian |
| October 22 | William Kittredge and Annick Smith Authors, Essayists; board member of the Sundance Institute (Smith) |
| November 17 | Ben Graf Henneke – On Laura Keene Author, Educator; past President of The University of Tulsa |
| February 3 | Richard Murphy – On Writing His Memoirs Poet, Fellow of the Royal Society |
| March 22 | Sir V. S. Naipaul – On A Way in the World Author, 2001 Nobel Laureate; 1971 Booker Prize winner; 1993 David Cohen Prize winner for lifetime achievement in British Literature |
| November 15 | Parker J. Palmer – On the Utility of Rare Book Collections Author, Educator; namesake of the Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education |
| October 18 | Geoffrey Ward and Dayton Duncan Documentary Filmmakers; Five time Emmy Award winner (Ward); 1989 National Book Critics Circle Award winner (Ward) |
| May | Richard Murphy Poet, Fellow of the Royal Society (Held at then-University Provost George Gilpin’s home) |
| October 22 | Helen Vendler A. Kingsley Porter University Professor, Harvard University; 2004 Jefferson Lecturer (Held at then-University Provost George Gilpin’s home) |
| December | Meeting to formally establish the McFarlin Fellows(based on those earlier dinners) |